Faster than your router? Verizon doubles FiOS speeds to 300Mbps

FiOS availability is still limited, but man is it fast.

Verizon today said it will double its highest FiOS Internet speeds to 300 megabits per second. That's faster than any cable offering, and faster than many of the wireless routers powering our homes. (If only FiOS was available in more places...)

The new speeds will be available in June, and offer a big boost to both upload and download times across most FiOS service levels. The biggest increase percentage-wise comes in the 50Mbps tier, which will triple to 150Mbps, as you can see in this chart provided by Verizon:

The vast majority of existing Verizon customers will be eligible for the upgrades. Unfortunately, Verizon may be stopping any major expansions of its FiOS infrastructure, so if cable and its 100Mbps max speed is your best option today it will likely stay your best option. But for existing customers, Verizon will provide free equipment upgrades (including faster routers) when necessary.

"No upgrade is required if you already have the 150Mbps speed and want to go to 300Mbps," Verizon spokesperson Phil Santoro told Ars. "If you have a slower speed you may need new equipment, which we will provide and install for free."

Pricing will be announced in June when the new speeds become available, he said. We asked Verizon if customers will have to pay extra to stay in the same tier they're already in, given that most tiers are getting a speed upgrade (as noted in the chart above). Verizon declined to answer that question, but did say users on existing plans will be able to continue at the same speed and price if they choose not to upgrade.

One thing that's impressive about the new service is that it will actually match the speed of many dual-band routers (although some can hit 450Mbps or even 900Mbps). Single-band routers using only the 2.4GHz band and not the faster 5GHz one typically top out at 150Mbps.

When we've talked about WiFi upgrades, it's usually in the context of speeds that will far outstrip most people's Internet connections, making them useful for streaming media from one device to another, but not really improving the connection between the Internet and your home.

But if your router is lagging, Verizon will replace it when you upgrade to a higher-speed service. "If you don't have a more recent router we provide you with the latest router and those capabilities are well over 300Mbps," Verizon Director of Product Development John Schommer told Ars. "We stress test them at more than double that speed."

The next generation of routers providing more than a gigabit per second will still be much faster than even FiOS's newest speeds, but 300Mbps will let you do a lot of cool stuff. Downloading a 5GB two-hour HD video will take 44.4 minutes at Verizon's slowest speed of 15Mbps, and just 2.2 minutes at 300Mbps. Upload speeds will also increase, with a 65Mbps offering for the top two speed tiers. At that rate, you can upload 10GB in 21 minutes, Verizon notes.

"300Mbps down is huge, but 65 up, no one can even come near that," Schommer said.

Here are some more stats provided by Verizon:

Verizon said the average home has seven Internet-connected devices, and that more than half of its residential customers already have at least a 20Mbps connection. Verizon said higher speeds are necessary to keep up with demand for streaming video, which as we've reported has surpassed peer-to-peer file sharing as the largest type of Internet traffic and will soon account for more than half of all consumer Internet traffic.

If you're unsure what speed is for you, Verizon offers some guidelines. The lowest tier of 15Mbps download speed and 5Mbps upload is just for basic tasks like e-mail and Web browsing in a home with one or two people and several devices. The 50/25Mbps tier can serve three or more users who frequently work at home, download music and photos, and view video. 75/35 will be good for users who stream HD movies to their TVs, download and upload video files, and play multiplayer games. The two highest tiers of 150/65 and 300/65 "are designed for households of five or more Internet-connected users who want to receive the best standard- and high-definition video streaming experience on a variety of devices," Verizon said.

Just how is Verizon doubling its highest speeds? Schommer said the key technology upgrade is from a BPON to GPON passive optical network. Customers with a BPON terminal installed at their house will need to be upgraded to a GPON terminal to get the new, higher speeds. Verizon said it will be able to upgrade the vast majority of customers. If you already have a GPON terminal, some rewiring may still be required.

Verizon FiOS is potentially available to 13.7 million customers in "parts of nine Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states plus parts of Florida, Texas, California and the District of Columbia," according to Verizon. The total will grow to 18 million as Verizon builds out the communities it has already started construction in. Verizon has committed to offer services only to those potential 18 million customers, but after hitting that number will evaluate further regions, the company told us. So while it's not looking good for expansions outside of current FiOS markets, it's not completely ruled out, either.

FIOS is simply amazing. I finally got service at my apartment a month ago and it is amazing. My cable connection occasionally burst up to 20Mbps for a few seconds, but FIOS consistently provides 32-34Mbps download. I can torrent with 30+ peers (1MBps+ in both directions) without interfering with streaming Netflix at all.

I currently have Comcast. Its a sad state of affairs when a "competing" high speed internet service gives me reason to consider finding a new job and moving into a house within their service area. #firstworldproblems

I have the Verizon 150Mbps service at home and it's awesome. (Although mine has always speedtested at 150/65, not 150/35.)

I just wish they would get their act together on bundling. They send me 2-3 flyers a month telling me to "upgrade" to 15/5 Internet and get FIOS TV for $10/mo. There are no similar bundles for the faster speeds. It's the only time in my life any branch of Verizon has ever been so determined that I should pay less than half of what I'm currently paying.

I'm in NYC, where supposedly Verizon had agreed to fiber up the entire city by sometime in 2014. But it's frustrating, as I'm in a single family house in Forest Hills, Queens, and see apartment houses fight with Verizon, as the board of directors (most are co-ops) don't want any more cables in, or on the building. So we wait, and wait, even though we're just a few blocks away from this mess, and Verizon's building is just a few blocks away.

I get huge bandwidth envy whenever I read articles like this. I just bought a house in a brand new subdivision and the absolute FASTEST speed the telco's are offering is 5/1. That's right, the same speed I had to my home over a decade ago is all that Bell Canada thinks is worth offering...

All this will be moot, depending on what the connection is to the backbone... I have FiOS.. I have great speeds to the central office... But from the central office to the backbone is where it gets flaky... I'm on the 25/25 plan... When Verizon was offering FiOS it was consistently 25/25... After they sold off to Frontier, it stayed the same... Until they started charging Frontier exorbitant prices to connect to their backbone, so Frontier had to switch backbone providers... That's when things started getting hairy.

I currently only get 25/25 for parts of the day, the rest of the day it goes down to about 10/10 or lower depending on congestion.

Having 300mbps to the central office sounds awesome in theory, but won't mean much if they don't upgrade how it connects to the backbone.

Sort of like my cellphone. In my city (largest burb in the metro area), I can pull down 10.5mbps on AT&T HSPA+. In the city where my office is, on the other side of the metro area, (with a smaller population), I can only pull down 4mbps.

On my Verizon LTE device, I was able to pull down 35mbps at work and at home when I first got it... Now I can only pull down 1.5mbps at work and 7mbps at home, a year later... With my AT&T HSPA+, I used to only be able to pull down 7mbps at home and 1.7mbps at work a year ago, now I can pull down 10.5mbps at home and 4mbps at work, a year later.

So basically, backhaul/backbone makes a huge difference, such that those FiOS numbers aren't very meaningful by itself.

Is there a good map of what areas have coverage and what areas are planed for coverage? I'm just looking at the big picture not down to the street level, just where is it even an option that I might beable to get FiOS

Its a shame they don't plan to expand. If they came to Vegas, I would sign up immediately.

The problem is that they aren't seeing the percentage of sign up in the areas they've gone to that they say they need to be profitable, so they've slowed expansion in these areas until sign up exceeds a certain percentage.

That's great, but please fix your fkng 3G speeds in my area, for the love of gawd! Better yet, 4G it all already!

I don't know, I'd prefer faster wired connections and slower+cheaper wireless connections. It's a phone. I don't need a 30 mbit connection to IM, email, and browse the web. I know, I'm behind the times because I don't try to watch HD movies on a 3.5" screen. I'd just prefer mobile internet at 4 or 5 mbps or so if it meant they charged a reasonable amount.

I have FiOS and while it is ridiculously fast, everything is bottlenecked by the wifi router. We just bought the house, and there's no ethernet strung through the walls, so everything - the computers, the TV, the xbox - all connects via the wifi.

There's also a certain point where faster speeds just don't mean much. If it's fast enough to stream your HD content, and your ping is 2ms, what's the value in faster? I mean, Verizon's primary selling point to me was not being Comcast.

Just in time. Come July 1st, we'll be moving from our old house in Buffalo (no FIOS) to our new house in West Seneca. We currently have the 7mb DSL plan from Verizon, and have been mostly happy (things get a little dicey when two or more of my family are trying to stream Netflix and I'm trying to play WoW, but that didn't happen often). Looked at the FIOS packages and I'd save money if I switched our TV over to FIOS instead of DirecTV, but then I couldn't get NFL Sunday Ticket, and that would keep me from watching about 12 Saints' games a year. #morefirstworldproblems

Anybody else find even 15/5 more than enough for your household? I would characterize myself as a higher than normal downloader, and I don't think I saturate the link enough to justify getting a higher tier of the service. What are you guys using all this bandwidth for? Streaming HD video? Bittorrent? Is there something I'm missing?

I find it funny that 15/5 is billed as "just enough for email and webbrowsing." I'd say it's pretty much good enough for anything I'd need it for. Actually, I have a much bigger problem with latency and dropped packets (Verizon and Google have intermittently some terrible routing problems where I'm at) than speed. At this point, with FIOS at this speed, it always seems to me that the problems tend not to crop up at my end-link, but instead at upstream routing.

Lowest plan from EPB in Chattanooga, TN: 30Mb SYMMETRIC for $57.99/mo. 50Mb, 100Mb and 1000Mb also available, all SYMMETRIC.

It's awesome. Just awesome. The fibers rule.

Woot! Actually sitting on that pipe now here in Chattanooga. Big fat dumb 'data as a utility' pipe. It's awesome to get out from regional monopolies who have no incentive to upgrade their existing infrastructure.

I just bought a house in a brand new subdivision and the absolute FASTEST speed the telco's are offering is 5/1.

That sucks... I get faster than that on my smartphone...

But that's why whenever we move, I always make sure broadband capability/speed is my #1 priority. Even wifey was behind me on that... If the area isn't served by decent broadband, we ain't buying...

One of my neighbors was ticked tho when I got FiOS... They said they couldn't get it, even tho they live across the street. Kind of ridiculous, but it is what it is. (Not the neighbor directly across from me, I live in a cul-de-sac, so I'm referring to the neighbor across the street our cul-de-sac attaches to)

Yes and No. Most "gigabit" routers are gigabit on the LAN ports, but still only 100MB on the WAN port that connects to your modem. The routers that offer gigabit on both usually cost more because they are a niche item at the moment. In the case of Fios, they issue mandatory modem/router hybrids, and their LAN ports on those routers are 100MB, so I doubt the WAN port is gigabit. So if you do pay for over 100, Verizon better issue you some better equipment.

Anybody else find even 15/5 more than enough for your household? I would characterize myself as a higher than normal downloader, and I don't think I saturate the link enough to justify getting a higher tier of the service. What are you guys using all this bandwidth for? Streaming HD video? Bittorrent? Is there something I'm missing?

I find it funny that 15/5 is billed as "just enough for email and webbrowsing." I'd say it's pretty much good enough for anything I'd need it for. Actually, I have a much bigger problem with latency and dropped packets (Verizon and Google have intermittently some terrible routing problems where I'm at) than speed. At this point, with FIOS at this speed, it always seems to me that the problems tend not to crop up at my end-link, but instead at upstream routing.

5mbit up is not enough for vpn/sftp access to grab files, especially not considering that i also have my seedbox seeding private torrents 24/7. With my existing 25/25 fios service my seedbox uploads 1TB every ~10days... which also makes me sooo glad that fios doesn't have monthly bandwidth limits or id be in trouble

Anybody else find even 15/5 more than enough for your household? I would characterize myself as a higher than normal downloader, and I don't think I saturate the link enough to justify getting a higher tier of the service. What are you guys using all this bandwidth for? Streaming HD video? Bittorrent? Is there something I'm missing?

I don't know... I had comcast (15/5) before... I had 2 TV's connected to Netflix, a third connected to foreign IP-TV, and I was always online playing Call of Duty. I never really noticed any problems...

Only reason I switched to FiOS, is because of those pesky caps I kept bumping up against... I think comcast was throttling my connection because whenever I got close to the cap, I started dropping packets like crazy.

I switched to FiOS and haven't looked back. Only reason I opted for 25/25, is because I like to SSH/Remote Desktop into my machines at home, so it's nice having a fatter upload pipe, so the screen repaints don't take forever.

This is a good thing, for the few who can get it. Hopefully it does help with competition a little bit.

I don't really feel the need personally for this kind of speed though. I'm quite satisfied with the 25/25 FIOS I get now (through frontier, so sadly I won't be seeing this upgrade. But it is consistent at those speeds and cheap) Anything more than that would just be a waste to me really.

I'm paying 45/mo for my 25/25, so it sounds about in line with dejavu and cdclndc. Locked into it for another year at least at the price, so i'm happy. Completely agree, data as utility ftw, though its nice that on rare occasion private companies function properly too.